Archive for the ‘Tablets’ Category

This order SC10-2101 (as corrected) from the Florida Supreme Court mandates email service as of September 1, 2012 in civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial and appellate courts. Email service in criminal, traffic, and juvenile divisions will be required as of October 1, 2013. Detailed instructions, including mandatory and optional items are included in the order, but it will take some time to sort out the new obligations imposed.

I would recommend that attorneys reevaluate how they handle “junk” email to ensure they receive proper notice. It is permissible to include secondary email addresses which can be monitored by an assistant or perhaps by a litigation support specialist on a firm wide basis, to ensure receipt of service is properly logged and notated in the firm’s case file.

The Court also in SC11-399 mandated electronic filing (e-filing) procedures for all documents filed in Florida Courts pursuant to Rule 2.525, starting with the civil, probate, small claims, and family law divisions of the trial courts, as well as for appeals to the circuit courts in these categories of cases, on April 1, 2013, except as may be otherwise provided by administrative order. E-filing will be required in the criminal, traffic, and juvenile divisions of the trial and appellate courts, on October 1, 2013, except as may be otherwise provided by administrative order. Additional details can be found on the Florida State Courts website. One important detail to be aware of is that even though service is deemed complete when the email is sent, e-mail service is treated as service by mail for the computation of time, as opposed to being treated like a fax.

Technology continues to play an increasing role in the practice of law, and Florida is moving towards the Court’s stated goal of “of a fully electronic court system.” I continue to believe that the ever growing prevalence of tablet use by lawyers will also cause paper to become less common in the court room. These changes will make it easier to keep all of your documents in electronic format, because that is how they will be need to be sent and received.

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Ten One Design has released information about an upcoming stylus for the iPad. The big benefits are that the stylus will not have to be manually paired with the iPad to work and it will feature “palm rejection”. For those of you not familiar with the term, that means the app you are doing the writing in, will be able to easily differentiate between your hand resting on the screen (as it will naturally do while writing) and the pen or stylus. This will enable better recognition of handwriting and more precise highlighting or markups of existing text. Information from Ten One is below:

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You may have been hearing good things about Bluetooth 4.0. It’s a fast wireless connection, and is fully supported by the CoreBluetooth framework in iOS5.

Bluetooth 4.0 devices don’t need to pair with your iPhone or iPad, they just connect and work. Also, the battery life is dramatically better – think months or a year on a single coin battery. We’ve developed the first pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad that uses Bluetooth 4.0.

Sample hardware is available today. If you’d like to have support for this device in your app, email info@tenonedesign.com, and we’ll schedule a shipment for you.

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After reading a number of posts reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Note such as this one on Droid Life and one from Cnet discussing whether anyone really wants or needs a stylus, I decided to chime in from the standpoint of a student and a future lawyer. First, some background, I live firmly in both the Android and iOS worlds, by having an iPad 2 for a tablet and a Droid X2 for a phone, so this post is going to be platform agnostic. I have been using apps such as Kno (itunes link) and Westlaw Next (itunes link) as well as Apples own iBooks to read cases and PDF files for class and the various clerking/internships I have had. I think people are under the mistaken impression that the primary function of the stylus is for taking handwritten notes, as opposed to entering text with a keyboard (be it soft or mechanical). Although, having that option is nice, and is especially useful for capturing signatures, it is not the primary reason I want a stylus to be fully supported by a tablet. The pen has survived because it is a great tool for marking on paper. And that is how I want to use a stylus, marking up existing content be it text or pictures and annotating, as opposed to a means of navigating around the tablet OS or writing long documents by hand.

I need to be able highlight relevant sections of legal cases (ideally with multiple colors to choose from) and add notes in the margins. For school I often want to make simple annotations, such as a TC or AC next to the holding of the Trial or Appellate Court to distinguish it from the higher court rulings. I might want to make a section as the Rule of the case, or use a different colors for dicta and the holding. I find highlighting text using my fingers somewhat difficult in all of these apps. Yes, it can be done, but if there is a link in or near the text I am highlighting, I often find it “activated” taking me out of the case and to the linked material. Then, when I go back I am not at the same location in the case, but have to start again from the “top”. Additionally, because fingers are relatively large blunt instruments compared to the size of the text, it can be difficult to accurately touch the screen to select the exact words I want. I am becoming more adept in each of the applications at using the tools provided to adjust the highlighted area to be accurate, but it is not a frustration free experience.

Ideally, by using a stylus, the tablet would know I am highlighting or writing and would not activate or select a link. It would distinguish between the navigation being accomplished by fingers and the more precise and specific input from the stylus. It would enable me to readily change colors and annotate the material I am reading with a few words (optionally converted to text, but not that is not a necessity). I think that would be a more fluid experience than what is currently provided today. I agree that if I am going to take pages of notes, a keyboard (for me a mechanical one) provides an optimal method to do it. I will leave the comparison of note taking apps for another day, but for now I want to say, “Give me a stylus!” I am hoping that is Apples “one more thing” for the iPad 3, and it would work well with there interactive iBooks initiative. Further, Apple adding a stylus would make it “cool” as opposed to the throwback to the days of the Palm Pilot that some reviews see it as.

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Link to Techcrunch review of new Thinkpad tablet. It has a digitizer which allows for pen input. This post will be updated with additional information.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/19/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-ideapad-k1/
“The ThinkPad tablet is like a legitimate dream tablet. It has nearly everything a person would want in a Honeycomb tab: an affordable digitizer pen, 2GB of cloud storage, a ton of built-in 3rd party apps, and a 1280×800, 16:10 IPS screen covered with Gorilla Glass. There’s an SD card slot, dual cameras, mini HDMI out, USB 2.0 host, micro USB port, and a SIM card slot. Lenovo states the Tegra 2-powered tab can run with WiFi enabled for 8 hours.

The ThinkPad Tablet is built for enterprise and so security and encryption are throughout the whole system including SD card encryption, lost device disablement and anti-theft software. The tablet ships with McAfee and features layered data security. All this amounts to a tablet with proper data protection whether the owner needs it or not.”

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A sign of the changing times. Technology is reshaping how we all interact.

Corporate clients generally have access to smart phones and other cutting-edge technology. But working class individuals often dont. So two litigators at an Arizona law firm have provided iPads to 20 clients in their biggest cases. The devices act as hotlines, helping clients of partner Marc Lamber and associate James Goodnow at Fennemore Craig to keep track of whats happening, and keep the 180-attorney Phoenix firm informed of developments, reports the Arizona Republic. Client Melissa Frankel, 40, was pleasantly surprised to be given an iPad, which she will be expected to return at the conclusion of her case, but has found it useful to take photos of the scene of her accident and have video conferences with her lawyers on Skype. With the help of Google Voice, the devices also make it easy for clients to reach their legal team. By…

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Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more books for the Kindle than print books — including hardcover and paperback — combined. Since April 1st, for every 100 print books that were sold on Amazon.com, the Amazon sold 105 Kindle eBooks. “Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books,” Amazon’s CEO and Founder Jeff Bezos said. “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happy this quickly — we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.”

Amazon.com Now Selling More Kindle Books Than Print Books

SEATTLE, May 19, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –

(NASDAQ:AMZN)–Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995. Twelve years later in November 2007, Amazon introduced the revolutionary Kindle and began selling Kindle books. By July 2010, Kindle book sales had surpassed hardcover book sales, and six months later, Kindle books overtook paperback books to become the most popular format on Amazon.com. Today, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, Amazon.com customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books – hardcover and paperback – combined.

“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com. “In addition, we’re excited by the response to Kindle with Special Offers for only $114, which has quickly become the bestselling member of the Kindle family. We continue to receive positive comments from customers on the low $114 price and the money-saving special offers. We’re grateful to our customers for continuing to make Kindle the bestselling e-reader in the world and the Kindle Store the most popular e-bookstore in the world.”

Recent milestones for Kindle include:

Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.
So far in 2011, the tremendous growth of Kindle book sales, combined with the continued growth in Amazon’s print book sales, have resulted in the fastest year-over-year growth rate for Amazon’s U.S. books business, in both units and dollars, in over 10 years. This includes books in all formats, print and digital. Free books are excluded in the calculation of growth rates.
In the five weeks since its introduction, Kindle with Special Offers for only $114 is already the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S.
Amazon sold more than 3x as many Kindle books so far in 2011 as it did during the same period in 2010.
Less than one year after introducing the UK Kindle Store, Amazon.co.uk is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover books, even as hardcover sales continue to grow. Since April 1, Amazon.co.uk customers are purchasing Kindle books over hardcover books at a rate of more than 2 to 1.
Kindle offers the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read. The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 950,000 books, including New Releases and 109 of 111 New York Times Best Sellers. Over 790,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 69 New York Times Best Sellers. Millions of free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are also available to read on Kindle devices. More than 175,000 books have been added to the Kindle Store in just the last 5 months.

All Kindle Books let you “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” – on all generation Kindles, as well as on the largest number of devices and platforms, including iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, Mac, PC, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Android-based devices, and soon HP TouchPads and BlackBerry PlayBooks. Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your place across devices, so you can pick up where you left off. With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books you purchase from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online in your Kindle library on Amazon, where they can be re-downloaded wirelessly for free, anytime.

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There are many articles encouraging attorney’s to use Dropbox to share files with others or with themselves. Often it is suggested a great way to get files between a work computer and a laptop or iPad. However, this is first time I have seen a claim that the files are not securely encrypted and that they can be viewed by Dropbox employees and subject to subpoena. Please review the below information and take appropriate steps to protect the confidentiality of your client’s data. I am sure we will hear more about in the days to come.

Dropbox, the popular cloud based backup service deduplicates the files that its users have stored online. This means that if two different users store the same file in their respective accounts, Dropbox will only actually store a single copy of the file on its servers.

The service tells users that it “uses the same secure methods as banks and the military to send and store your data” and that “[a]ll files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.” However, the company does in fact have access to the unencrypted data (if it didn’t, it wouldn’t be able to detect duplicate data across different accounts).

This bandwidth and disk storage design tweak creates an easily observable side channelthrough which a single bit of data (whether any particular file is already stored by one or more users) can be observed.

If you value your privacy or are worried about what might happen if Dropbox were compelled by a court order to disclose which of its users have stored a particular file, you should encrypt your data yourself with a tool like truecrypt or switch to one of several cloud based backup services that encrypt data with a key only known to the user.

Dropbox employees aren’t able to access user files, and when troubleshooting an account, they only have access to file metadata (filenames, file sizes, etc. not the file contents)… All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256) and are inaccessible without your account password.

Starting on or before April 14, Dropbox changed that help page, and changed it again on April 23, so it now says:

Dropbox employees are prohibited from viewing the content of files you store in your Dropbox account, and are only permitted to view file metadata… we have a small number of employees who must be able to access user data for the reasons stated in our privacy policy (e.g., when legally required to do so). But that’s the rare exception, not the rule. We have strict policy and technical access controls that prohibit employee access except in these rare circumstances… All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256)

A little different, eh?

Dropbox followed up on April 21, discussing employee access to encrypted data, and explaining changes to its Terms of Service Agreement, including this new TOS provision:

We may disclose to parties outside Dropbox files stored in your Dropbox and information about you that we collect when we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) comply with a law, regulation or compulsory legal request; (b) protect the safety of any person from death or serious bodily injury; (c) prevent fraud or abuse of Dropbox or its users; or (d) to protect Dropbox’s property rights.

So Dropbox appears to be clearly stating they have access to your data and have the right to disclose it as they believe necessary.

Once again, the security of cloud computing for attorneys is brought into question.

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The information discussed here shows why I was so interested in the Kno, because the biggest part that seems to be lacking in tablets/eBooks is in the note taking department. I really think the stylus handwriting method of input is what is going to drive the next wave of tablet adoption.

Researchers at the University of Washington have found that, while useful, Kindles (specifically that larger Kindles DX) aren’t all that popular with students – yet. Their issues, arguably, are UI problems including the need for a “skimmable” abstract of content and better note-taking systems.

“Most e-readers were designed for leisure reading – think romance novels on the beach,” said co-author Charlotte Lee, a UW assistant professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. “We found that reading is just a small part of what students are doing. And when we realize how dynamic and complicated a process this is, it kind of redefines what it means to design an e-reader.”

The study also reported some additional issues with reading on e-readers among them:

Students did most of the reading in fixed locations: 47 percent of reading was at home, 25 percent at school, 17 percent on a bus and 11 percent in a coffee shop or office.
The Kindle DX was more likely to replace students’ paper-based reading than their computer-based reading.
Of the students who continued to use the device, some read near a computer so they could look up references or do other tasks that were easier to do on a computer. Others tucked a sheet of paper into the case so they could write notes.
With paper, three quarters of students marked up texts as they read. This included highlighting key passages, underlining, drawing pictures and writing notes in margins.
A drawback of the Kindle DX was the difficulty of switching between reading techniques, such as skimming an article’s illustrations or references just before reading the complete text. Students frequently made such switches as they read course material.
The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues such as the location on the page and the position in the book to go back and find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.

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Textbook publishers are you listening? Please get on the bandwagon before I am out of school. That basically means you need to do it now.

From the Association of American Publishers Press Release:

E-Books Rank as #1 Format among All Trade Categories for the Month

April 14, 2011; New York, NY– Powerful continuing growth of books on digital platforms–both e-Books and Downloaded Audiobooks–are highlights of the February 2011 sales report of the Association of American Publishers, which is being released today.

The report, produced by the trade association of the U.S. book publishing industry, tracks monthly and year-to-date publishers’ net sales revenue in all categories of commercial, education, professional and scholarly books and journals.

According to the February results, once again e-Books have enjoyed triple-digit percentage growth, 202.3%, vs February 2010. Downloaded Audiobooks, which have also seen consistent monthly gains, increased 36.7% vs last February.

This one-month surge is primarily attributed to a high level of strong post-holiday e-Book buying, or “loading,” by consumers who received e-Reader devices as gifts. Experts note that the expanded selection of e-Readers introduced for the holidays and the broader availability of titles are factors.

Additionally, Trade publishing houses cite e-Books as generating fresh consumer interest in–and new revenue streams for–“backlist” titles, books that have been in print for at least a year. Many publishers report that e-Book readers who enjoy a newly-released book will frequently buy an author’s full backlist.

For the year to date (January/February 2011 vs January/February 2010), which encompasses this heavy post-holiday buying period, e-Books grew 169.4% to $164.1M while the combined categories of print books fell 24.8% to $441.7M.*

According to Tom Allen, President and Chief Executive Officer of AAP, “The February results reflect two core facts: people love books and publishers actively serve readers wherever they are. The public is embracing the breadth and variety of reading choices available to them. They have made e-Books permanent additions to their lifestyle while maintaining interest in print format books.”

Allen added that book publishers have been leaders among content providers in identifying and serving new audiences. “Publishers have always strategically expanded into all the markets and formats where readers want to find books, whether it was Trade Paperback, Mass Market or now digital. By extending their work as developers, producers and marketers of high-quality content to emerging technologies, publishers are constantly redefining the timeless concept of ‘books.’”

Other highlights in the February 2011 report (all February 2011 vs February 2010 unless otherwise noted):

Religious books:
February sales of $48.5M were an increase of 5.5%; this reflects growth as well in the category for year-to-date, up 6.1% to $93.9M.

Education categories:
Higher Education sales for YTD (January and February 2011) were $406.9M, down slightly by 5.6% vs YTD 2010. In K-12, YTD sales were $173M, declining 8.9% from 2010.

Professional/Scholarly categories:
Total sales for professional books and journals were $42.9M, a slight drop of 3.6% vs February 2010. Combined sales of University Press (hardcover and paperback) were $6.7M, falling 6% vs last year.

The AAP monthly and year-end sales report represents data provided by 84 U.S. publishing houses representing major commercial, education, professional, scholarly and independents. Data on e-Books comes from 16 houses. The report does not include all book and journal net sales but provides what’s acknowledged as the best industry snapshot currently available.

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This article from Engadget seems to mirror what I have been saying about mixing the benefits of touch and stylus (pen) computing. Touch is great for ease of use and navigating, but does not match a stylus ability for precision writing versus typing. Excerpt below:

Few would want to return to those days of stylus-driven interfaces, but styli can still be helpful for a number of tasks, including diagramming, drawing and sketching, signing documents and handwriting recognition. In this regard, their status has become similar to keyboards on capacitive-touch devices — great when you need them, but a form factor compromise when you don’t. So, just as the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer works with an optional keyboard, HTC will make its Scribe pen an extra, taking a tentative step toward bringing back the stylus, though not a half-hearted one — the company allows one to write anywhere in the Sense user interface, supporting the stylus input method with the backing of software.